Origami, by Benjamin Jones

Wake up. Run to the bathroom. Vomit in the toilet. Wash out your mouth with Listerine. Shower. Pull clumps of hair from your flaking scalp. Dry off. Cut another hole in your belt, then get dressed. Decide your pants are too loose and cut another hole in your belt, and refasten. Drink half of a vanilla protein shake and pray you don’t vomit in the car.

Drive to work. Ignore the ubiquitous glances from your coworkers. Smash open-source images together into a photo-shopped advertisement for a European pharmaceutical giant. Feel the protein shake climb your esophagus. Run to the bathroom. Vomit in the sink. Wonder why the hell pharmaceutical companies exist.

Go home. Listen to sympathetic voicemails from friends you haven’t spoken to since you owned a portable CD player. Consider suicide. Go to bed.

Wake up. Go to work. Leave early to see the oncologist. Listen to the snooty ass clown explain that your colon is still plump with rebellious tissue. Consider making his colon plump with your foot. Nod instead.

Accept more chemo. Accept the possibility of death without a legacy. Go home.

Wake up. Roll a successful joint. Get blazed out of your gourd. Go to work. Photoshop boobs onto the angel from the cover of Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti”. Turn it in. Accept your boss’s second offer for a paid leave-of-absence.

Wake up. Listen to one more sympathetic voicemail. Drive to the nearest bridge. Throw your phone in the goddamn river.

Wake up. Smoke a bomber. Go for a run on the bike trail. Run into the woods. Get lost among the pines. Admire a deer in a clearing. Find a road. Thumb a ride home from a lovely Jehovah’s witness named Woody. Decline his offer of eternal salvation. Go home. Smoke more marijuana. Eat a bloody steak with a baked potato smothered in butter.

Hop the fence at an apartment complex and swim naked by moonlight. Forget suicide.

Go to the doctor. Make him repeat himself. Go home. Smoke the last of your weed. Practice origami. Go to bed. Wake up.

Benjamin Jones was born in central Iowa and attended college at Illinois Wesleyan University where he majored in English and Theater Arts. After graduating he worked as a sports journalist in Iowa for two years before moving to Chicago where he currently resides.